


Glowing Horizon

by iphis18



Category: Bend It Like Beckham (2002)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-15 21:27:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8073304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iphis18/pseuds/iphis18
Summary: The movie, only gayer.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Ever wished the movie actually ended up with lesbians in? Yeah, me too. (Constantly. So I wrote this.)
> 
> Due to the nature of this work, some of the dialogue is adapted or taken directly from the movie.

It’s not like Tony, really. There you have the boy who walks around carrying his mum’s groceries, chatting about inanities and smiling like tomorrow’s a glowing horizon, and then on the other hand there's this blur of moving body and sweat-stained cotton grinning at Jess like the only thing worth thinking about is _right now,_ like her friends needing her to fill out a field means as much as Jess filling up the kitchen. 

And the thing is, it should mean less. But the Jess who burns her cooking and looks stony in salwar and kameez is exactly the same person as the Jess who can bend a ball like nobody’s business and talks to the Beckham poster on the wall of her room, so really, what else could you expect? She lets go of the groceries and gets right into it.

She’s always been a bit too willing to get messy for her family’s comfort, a bit too ready to drop things for her own. But it’s not that bad, is it? Pinky’s the one measuring the days before her marriage in terms of freedom (and what a freedom that is, slipping off into the backseat of Teets’s car and getting Jess to cover), and what’s this awkward period between college and uni for anyway? Certainly not the vagaries of aloo gobi and achaar. 

So maybe tomorrow’s not a glowing horizon and maybe she’s never quite been able to pretend that’s what it is, daydreaming in front of the telly be damned, but right now has to be worth thinking about. Nothing that feels this good couldn’t be, so Jess aligns her body with the ball and the sun shines down on her, her mates laughing around her, and for the moment, everything’s okay.

⁂

Speaking of the sun.

This gori walks in with golden hair cropped close to her face that makes Jess’s heart twist thinking about the amount of time and pain her thick, heavy braid entails, and she’s smiling with these shell pink lips that fill Jess’s head with the rushing sound of the sea all the way inland here in a park that’s nothing but green, and she’s saying these things that can only be the fresh air because this Jess here is a lifetime away from a real team, no matter how much she dreams.

And—her _shoulders_. How do you get away with looking so sweet and shy when you’re speaking a miracle into being?

Her name is Jules and she thinks Jess has gotten _really good_ and Jess’s mates are behind her making lesbian jokes that sound a tiny bit less ridiculous than Jess would like them to and Jess doesn’t stop smiling for the rest of the day.  
  
⁂

So _no_ , Jess is _not_ as bad as her mates thank you very _much_ , she is not in this for swapped shirts or soaping each other down in the showers. All the same, something in her thrills at the idea of being on the pitch with a woman’s team, playing with people whose bodies work a bit more like hers than those of the scraggly adolescent boys who’ve managed to scrape together an athleticism owing more to enthusiasm and youth than, say, talent or hard work.

She looks them, these girls with their shining eyes and their fast, strong bodies, and her heart sings even as it sinks, comparing itself to them. They’re mostly white, with a couple of black girls—she doesn’t see any other Asians, but she hadn’t expected to either. They all, to a woman, play with a kind of polish and coordination that could only have come with time and dedication, something she only wishes she could have put in.

Still. It can’t be too late. She refuses to believe it could be. She catches Jules’s eye, grins in a way that feels a lot more confident than her electrified hands do, and runs into the fray.

It’s easier than she’d worried it might be, slotting herself in with them. They’re a bunch of good, solid players, and she thinks maybe she could be one too.

⁂

Jules seems to think so, if the way she pulls Jess close to her with a giddy grin after the practice is any indication. It feels right somehow, standing with her, the way it had out on the pitch, passing the center of their shared universe between them with so much ease.

They walk out together, strides in sync, with Jess asking in a stumbling voice that wants nothing more than to shrink away before it can damage this piece of perfection, about the team’s inception. Jules beams, fills her in on it—how she’d been at the management for ages, how they’ve gotten to where they win as many trophies as the boys’ side—and Jess starts beaming back. She can see that determination in Jules that’s gotten her all this, this team and all its trimmings, and it’s glorious.

Jules is pretty glorious in general, really. Even amongst all these girls who’ve got a lot more going for them than Jess had ever expected to experience, she stands out as something special. It’s odd to think that this was the person who’d picked her out from the park, who’d somehow seen something in Jess she’d thought worth bringing here. It’s a nice oddness though.

A slightly less pleasant oddness comes when Jules asks about Jess’s family, but it passes soon enough when Jess produces a slightly stilted white lie of an answer. They move on to more interesting things, sharing their pasts and plans for the future between them, and it’s not long before Jess feels like everything’s right with the world again.

When she goes home, she lies in bed marvelling at the day that’s passed—the pitch, and the girl who’d brought her there.

⁂

So yeah, Jess is _definitely_ only impressed by the presence of the changing rooms as a sign that this is more than some corner of the park, so she is _not expecting_ the way her heart skips a beat when she walks into a room full of adolescents in their underwear and Jules beckoning her over to change next to her.

Neither is she expecting to be introduced to the captain while said captain’s topless but for a lacy black bra, nor had she really expected Mel to be quite what she is—her skin even a shade darker than Jess’s, hair smoother and straighter than Pinky’s, with this wide smile and amazing body, and oh, she’s telling Jess that Jules needs some _service_. Isn’t this _great_.

Jess smiles, uncertain of quite how to react, and starts wrestling her way into her gear.

(Jules dispenses with her top to practice in her jock bra this time, still pulls her close at the end of the day, Jess’s face resting against her bare skin. This really isn’t awkward at all.)

⁂

It feels like a world away when her parents are sitting her down and telling her she can’t play, like all the sand in existence had been set upside down the moment her mother saw her out there in the park with her bare legs and the boys’ bare chests.

She’s out there again now, but covered up in denim, and here’s Tony in a tight T shirt of his own, offering her tissues and talking to her in his warm, reasonable voice about how parents always see the worse and how what they don’t know won’t hurt them, really, and she wonders how it got this far, when being the thing she wants to be became this much of a problem.

It always has been, she supposes, just that she never needed it not to be this badly either, a fact hammered home when Jules comes running over.

Jess makes the introductions thinly, loses herself a little looking at the way Jules smiles and the brightness in her face when she says that the team—that she herself!—has high hopes for Jess. Sure, it’s like being stabbed, but it’s nice in its own way, having this radiant being believe in her.

This radiant being, encouraging and cajoling, asking Jess not to leave her alone out there—yeah, definitely like being stabbed.

⁂

So Jess learns Aloo Gobi and how to shoot a penalty and that Jules makes jokes about bootblacking and starts bouncing on her toes when she’s excited. She also wants to spend time practicing alone with Jess after the rest of the team’s gone, most days, and yes, it’s probably just because Jess is the only one hard up enough for time on the field to agree, but something about being out there alone with Jules just feels right.

The rest of it’s good too, of course, joking with the team in the locker room and playing (and winning!) actual matches with them, and feeling like she’s found a place that fits once she’s run out of her family’s house. It’s not that Jules is different from it all, just that she’s also somehow _more._  

Jess tries not to think about all this too much. It’s hard enough when her sister’s found out, never mind the strange ugly feeling that bubbles up in her stomach when her sister asks why she doesn’t just want a boyfriend like everyone else does.

⁂

She goes out shopping with Jules. They sit next to each other on the tube, laugh and talk and angle their bodies towards each other like they would on the pitch except they’re not quite now, are they? It would explain the odd things Jess’s heart is doing, but no.

They go into a pub. Jules gets a beer for herself and a coke for Jess and they crow, jubilant, over Jess’s new boots. She thinks, idly, she’d take this—this moment of joy—over a boyfriend any day. 

She visits Jules’s house with her denim jacket unbuttoned, watches football with her in her room—cosy by most standards yet spacious in comparison to hers. She doesn’t know what it is that possesses her to sit on Jules’s bed when Mrs Paxton flusters her way in, or what it is that makes her move closer to Jules on the bed. She just hope her face stays on straight when the gori’s trying to wrap her mouth around Jess’s name, and when she describes Jules’s aesthetic choices as _great big butch women on the wall_.

She laughs with Jules when they’re out of that house, and yeah, maybe all families are kind of embarrassing. That seems less important just now though, when Jules is clinging to her shoulders and laughing like the world’s going to end.

“Jules,” she asks when the laughter’s left her lungs, plucking out the words like they’ve been hanging in the air, “do you fancy anyone?”

Jules contorts her face into something like a smile and shoves her hands deeper into her pockets. “Nah,” she says, scrunching her shoulders downwards and looking away from Jess. “Everyone I know’s a prat who thinks girls can’t play football.”

_We really can, though_ , Jess thinks, says instead “Yeah, I hope I end up marrying an Indian boy who’ll let me play football too.”

Jules snorts at that, her shoulders loosening up.

“Shut _up_ ,” Jess says, grinning, and the odd knot in her stomach starts to uncoil.

⁂

She gets home and it’s the wrong kind of silent. Pinky’s crying and Teets’s parents are there, looking for all the world like they’re made of stone. Jess’s dad doesn’t look like stone though—he’s all flesh right now.

They tell her she was seen being _filthy with an English boy_ , at the bus stop _kissing him_ , and Jess’s insides curl back around. “Kissing?” she asks, trying to will the sick feeling away. “Me? A _boy_?”

It doesn’t even make sense, she thinks, then—oh. Jules.

“I _was_ at the one-twenty bus stop today,” she says, “but with _Juliet_? My friend? She’s a _girl_.” She swallows hard, tries to keep from shaking. “And we weren’t kissing or anything, for God’s _sake_.”

She swears on Babaji’s name and her family moves their accusatory glares at last. “Sometimes these English girls have such short hair,” Jess’s mum says and Jess sits down, tries to breathe. “You just can’t _tell_.”

Pinky tells their parents about the football, calls Jules a _dykey girl_. Jess can’t stop dwelling on that word.

⁂

So Jules visits Jess’s home under much less favourable conditions, wearing more clothes than Jess has ever seen her wear - no jock bras or midriff shirts or oversized leather jackets today. She almost looks respectable, this gori on their doorstep who Pinky looks at with blank eyes.

Jess serves her tea with shaking hands, and they’re not laughing now. Jess sits and stares at her lap, fingers twitching, while Jules explains to Jess’s parents in this tight, posh accent, exactly why it is that Jess should be on the team.

Jess walks Jules out and they’re still so far from what they were, but Jules hugs her and tells her about a trip to Germany, and _oh_ , this is _not_ yet the end.

⁂

Pinky comes ‘round to the concept, invents a trip to Croyden, and then Jess is climbing into the bus while her teammates scream in delight, and if this isn’t more than Jess ever expected to live she’ll eat her boots.

They sightsee as a team, Jules putting on a jacket that covers her sleeveless ’69 shirt and regrettably also her arms. Jules has a camera too, takes almost as many pictures of Jess as of the scenery.

They play the match and it’s glorious. The German commentator manages to turn even Jess’s name, already truncated for gora benefit, into a _yess_ , and she loses on a penalty. It’s not ideal, but it’s still so much better than staying at home and _not playing football_ would have been.

Jess hasn’t brought anything to wear to a club, and Jules calls Mel over for backup. Jess’s denim hangs tight onto Mel’s shoulders and Jess looks like something she’d never even considered being. She walks awkwardly, one hand over her stomach, and tries not to look over at the way Jules’s top doesn’t even cover as much as her jock bra usually does.

Mel sheds the denim to show her bare arms once they get to the club and Jess picks up a drink. Jules is… herself, glowing and glittering and speaking in this high, clear voice Jess hasn’t quite heard out of her before and things are what they are.

They end up dancing in front of each other, Jules shimmying and shimmering and Jess feels so clumsy, can’t keep her eyes where they should be, and all of a sudden her head spins and she feels so sick she has to walk away.

Staggering, she makes it to the balcony, fumbles her way to a seat. Jules follows after a little while, eyes wide and worried, shoulders slackening a little when she sees Jess. Jess breathes heavy, bemoans the wines and the smoky room, starts babbling about how brilliant Jules was with her parents, how _brave_ , and she’s not expecting it at all when Jules takes her face in trembling hands and kisses her.

It’s like her heart stops. It’s like _time_ stops. She freezes, brain numb and body _sparkling_ and she blinks a bit too slowly and she says “I can’t,” _I can’t_ , and the only thing that matters after that is Jules walking away and everything standing still.

⁂

She’s still trying to get Jules to just _talk to her_ , to just _look at her again_ for even a second, when the bus has stopped and her parents are there and that’s the end of that, isn’t it?

It’s back to cooking and housework only this time Pinky’s next to her, a picture of misery, and it’s just far too much time stewing in her own head.

“Pinks,” she asks at last, hesitantly, “how do you know Teets is the one?” She shrinks back a little in anticipation of the answer, but her sister isn’t even looking at her.

“I just know,” her sister answers in the tone of one enamoured. “When you’re in love with someone… You’d do anything for that person.”

Jess closes her eyes, tries to keep her traitorous mind away from the picture of Jules, dressed up and holding a teacup sitting in front of Babaji’s portrait. “Pinks,” she tries, heart beating too fast, “do you think mum and dad would still speak to me if I ever brought home a—gora?” 

“ _Who_?” Pinky asks, snapping back to life.  
  
“No one, I’m just saying,” Jess says, thinking _well gori, really_.

“It’s one of those footballers, innit?” Pinky asks, her nostrils flaring. “I knew you must have been hiding it for something.”

“No, nothing’s _hap_ pened,” Jess says, and Pinky’s glaring.

“Yeah, well you make sure it doesn’t, alright?” Pinky says, turns away. 

Jess blinks, looks down, feels like everything’s crumbling.

“Look, Jess—you can marry anyone you want. It’s _fine_ at first when you’re in love and all that, but do you really want to be the one that everyone stares at every family do ‘cause you married the English man?”  


“Why do I have to get _married_ , though?” Jess asks, knowing the folly of it before the words have even tripped onto her tongue.  
  
“Why bring him home otherwise?” Pinky asks with this little furrow between her brows. “Either he matters to you or not, innit?”

She says more things, Jess is sure. She thinks she hears Tony’s name in there somewhere. She’s stopped listening though, turns the words over and over in her head.

⁂

Jess walks over to the Paxtons’, makes awkward conversation with Jules’s mum. She’s walked into Jules’s room, her heart juddering when she sees Jules huddled up in bed despite the sunlight in the air. Jules looks cold and alien and faraway, untouchable in the daylight.

Jules’s mum leaves them to it, and oh. Jules looks like she wants to kill Jess.

“Look, Jules,” Jess tries, “I feel really bad about what happened.”

“Yeah well, you should,” Jules says, and that stings. That she’d dealt with the situation badly Jess is prepared to admit, but it’s not like she hasn’t been trying to fix it either.

“ _Sorry_ ,” she says though, and she is. “I don’t want you to be in a strop with me,” she starts, and the rest gets caught in her throat because Jules is looking at her with actual daggers.

“I’m _not_ in a strop,” Jules insists, face twisting and Jess feels like all the wind has been knocked out of her.

“I didn’t know what I was _doing_ ,” Jess says, her own features contorting. They fall silent, look at each other. “I don’t know why you’re taking this so hard, it’s not like you’re in love with me or something,” she tries, bitterness spilling over on her tongue.

“You don’t know the _meaning_ of love,” Jules says, wounded and ugly in her anger. “You’ve _really_ hurt me, Jess,” she continues, and it strikes Jess then how vulnerable Jules looks like this, curled low in the safety of her blankets and so far away despite being close enough to touch. “That’s all there is _to_ it.”

“So that’s it,” Jess asks, numbed and not wanting even this moment to end if it’s so likely to be the last.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Jules says, biting the words off savagely. “ _Bye_.”

Jess can’t stand to look at Jules a moment longer. She runs down the stairs and out of the house, heedless of the goras littered in her path.

⁂

“Do you fancy me, Tony?” Jess asks in the pavilion. The day is bright and green and beautiful and she forms the question like she’d ask about the answers for an exam.

Her friend looks at her and smiles gently, confused. “I like you, yeah,” he starts, hasn’t formed the _but_ when she jumps in—

“Well good, maybe we can go out then, yeah?” Jess tries, speaking a little too fast, like the words could run away.

“Jess, what’s going on?” he asks, still smiling, still confused. Jess looks away.

“Just think I need an Indian boyfriend,” she confesses.

“ _What_ is going on, Jess?” Tony asks, voice lower than normal. “You’re acting all weird.”

“Sorry,” Jess says, mouth twisting. It feels like she’s been saying that a lot. “You know that girl from the Harriers, yeah? Jules?”

“Yeah?” Tony asks, Tony who’d once laughingly kicked a ball around with her and Jules. 

“Well, she kissed me in Germany,” Jess says, and Tony springs back, laughs.  
  
“Wow!” he says, grins at her, and she feels herself smiling back. It feels so much better—changes so much more—to have said it than she had thought it would. “And that’s why you need an Indian boyfriend?”

Jess raises an eyebrow. “Well, I didn’t react very well, and now she _hates_ me,” she explains. “I tried to talk to her about it but I think I just made it worse and I don’t know if I can make it right, so.”

“Oh, look, Jessy,” Tony says, shrugs a little helplessly, “you can’t plan who you fall for, it just _happens_. I mean look at… Posh and Becks!” He raises an eyebrow, elbows her gently.

She laughs. “Well, Beckham’s the best,” she says, she with the posters papering her walls.

“Yeah,” Tony says, laughs a little. “I really like Beckham too,” he continues, a little too fast himself now.

“Of course you do!” Jess says brightly. “No one can cross a ball or bend a ball like Beckham.”

Tony shakes his head, a tiny, quickly repeated movement. “No, Jess,” he says, “I _really like_ Beckham.”

Jess frowns, shakes her own head a little as if to clear it. As if anything could make this clear. “What, you mean…?”

Tony nods now, the action small and precise. His eyelashes echo the path of his gesture.

“But you’re Indian,” she says at last, full of disbelief.

“Aren’t you?” he asks thinly. “Look, I haven’t told anyone.”

Jess laughs without humour. “God, what’s your _mum_ going to say?” she asks, falters. What would _her_ mum say if she knew the truth about all this? She blinks, tries to return to the present moment. “ _My_ sister thinks you’re mad about me!”

“I am,” Tony says, ever supportive, ever sweet. “I just don’t want to marry you.” Jess blinks at him, wonders why it all comes down to marriage.

He gets up, walks to the end of the pavilion to look out at their mates fooling around with a ball. She follows after a while. “Wonder what all those tossers would say if they knew,” she says, _about us_ , thinks about those comments they’d made when Jules first strode up to Jess in the park. 

Tony starts. “ _Jess_ ,” he says, urgent, “you’re not going to tell anyone?”  
  
“‘Course not!” she answers, giddy. “It’s okay Tony. I mean, it’s okay with me.”  


“Yeah,” he says. “And you fancying your gori _footballer_ ’s okay with me.” 

“Did I say I _fancy_ her, Tony?” she asks, can’t keep the smile off her face.  
  
“Don’t you?” he asks. “Not like you to agonise over someone who isn’t important to you. ‘Sides, sounds an awful lot like you wanted to kiss her back when you came to your senses.”  


She exhales sharply, and they grin at each other a moment before looking away.

⁂

Jules comes over to Jess’s house again, this time in a T shirt that is relatively respectable, if a little too tight on her, and it’s Jess now who feels overdressed in a buttoned up shirt with her hair uncurled and tied up. “Jess?” Jules asks, voice hard but not as far away as Jess had feared. Jess turns around, feels like the sun has risen.

“We all missed you at training today,” Jules says abruptly as she takes in Jess’s little room. “Especially me. I um.” She huffs out a short breath. “I heard about what happened with your dad. I was worried you’d gotten into more trouble.” What is it, actually, with Jess’s family paying attention to her at exactly the wrong time?

“I’m really in the shit,” Jess admits, thinking about the wedding and the final. “Dad hasn’t talked to me since. He’ll never let me go back to join the team.”

She sits down on her bed, facing where Jules has commandeered her desk chair.

“But you can’t miss the final,” Jules says, eyes wide and imploring. “Jess, there’s going to be an American _scout_ there.”

“I can’t,” Jess says clearly, raises her eyebrows for emphasis. “It’s the _same day_ as my sister’s wedding.”

“Oh, _shit_ ,” Jules breathes out, turning away. “Well… Well can’t you get away for a bit?” she tries, looks pleadingly at Jess.

“You don’t understand,” Jess says, a smile she doesn’t like breaking over her face.

“You give up football now, what’re you gonna have to give up next?” Jules demands.

“Don’t rub it in, right?” Jess says stiffly, gets up. “You came here because you need me if that bloody scout shows up,” she says, anger washing over her.

“Look,” Jules says, standing in turn, “I came here ‘cause I was worried about you. I guess I was just wasting my bloody time.”

It’s Jules storming out now, leaving Jess to stand caught between feeling used and like the worst friend on earth.

⁂

Apparently, despite it all, Jules fronts up at the wedding preparations to tell Jess’s dad about the scout at the final. Jess probably isn’t meant to know, since Jules doesn’t seem to want to stick around long enough to talk, but Jess runs after her.

“Got my results,” she says, confessional, feeling her shoulders tilt in a way she knows she’s picked up from Jules. “I’m starting university soon, I won’t have time to train and stuff.”

“That’s a shame,” Jules says, face twisting a little. “You could have gone so much farther.”

Jess looks down, wishes she had that much by way of bravery. “I know there’s a scout coming,” she says. “Sorry I’m letting you down.”  
  
“He’s coming for the both of us, you know,” Jules says, with an odd, regretful smile. “He’s interested in you too.”  


“Me?” Jess asks, incredulous despite it all. It’s one thing to have Jules and the team believing in her, something else for some American stranger to care about Jess with a football.

Jules raising an eyebrow at her. “Yes, _you_ ,” she says. “You’re bloody good, you know. We could be playing for England someday.”  
  
Jess pauses, tries to find her breath. “Why are you doing this to me, Jules?” she asks at last, almost pleading. “Every time I talk myself out of it, you come around and make it sound so easy.”

It’s Jules who looks down now. “I guess I don’t want to give up on you,” she sighs, and then there’s another space of silence, neither girl willing to look the other in the eye. “So. Come and see us sometime I guess.”

⁂

Tony, bless that boy, gets her to the second half of the tournament game, with Jess’s father’s approval no less. Jess changes in the car, Tony laughing at the machinations it takes her to strip out of her sari and into her football kit, and Jess is subbed in once she gets there. Jules hugs her and it’s like the world is filled to bursting with joy.

Jules and Jess score a goal apiece, Jess the winning goal, and if the world was bursting before she doesn’t know what this is. Her teammates help her back into her sari, though given their level of expertise they’re hindering more than helping, and she loves it, even if they are dancing around her with the cloth like she’s a bloody maypole. She leaves the changing rooms with Jules, and there’s the American scout, this caricature in a baseball hat. He shakes their hands, offers them a full ride scholarship as he leaves.

They look at each other, consumed with excitement. This time, Jess kisses Jules, sunlight spilling over them.

⁂

Jules turns up as Pinky’s hugging her family goodbye, and that’s brilliant. She kisses Jess on the cheek, tells her she looks gorgeous. Jules looks rather nice herself, in the clean, pressed clothing she’d worn to talk to Jess’s parents that one time.

Mrs Paxton follows after her, saying horrifying things in a loud voice around all Jess’s uncles and aunts, and that’s a slightly less pleasant surprise. Pinky pulls her into the car with her after that, asks her what the bloody hell is going on. Jess tries to swallow the volume of her heart beating in her ears, tells Pinky she has no idea what the gori was on about.

Pinky clicks her tongue. “Jess, don’t you _want_ all of this?” she asks, her voice softer than Jess had expected, less angry, like she’s actually trying to persuade her. She gestures, bangles clinking. “I mean, it’s the—best day of your life, innit?”

“I want more than this,” Jess tells her sister, the words so starkly true they hurt to say. Pinky’s face falls as Jess tells her about the scholarship to America.

“There’s no way dad will let you go and live abroad without getting married first,” Pinky reminds her, voice still gentle.

Jess looks at her sister, beautiful and shining and so unlike the future she wants, and has nothing at all to say.

⁂

Jess stands in the kitchen, listens to the aunties trying in their own feeble way to unpack the happenings of the afternoon—trying to figure out what Jules’s mum had been on about with the _shouting_ and the _shoes_ and the. Well, the kissing.

It’s like all the brightness and the bravery’s gone out of her. She shrinks against the counter as Tony walks in, looks up at him with pleading eyes. “How’m I going to tell them, Tony?” she asks, shaking her head helplessly. “I have now, or I’ll end up a solicitor, _bored_ out of my mind.” Not that she feels much like she’s in her own mind right now.

Tony looks at her. Sighs. Swallows. It’s so odd to think they’re the same people who played football in the park like the world was easy as anything, when they’re now standing around suffocating in their stiff clothes and the weight of the air. “Come with me,” Tony says at last, his voice low. He takes her hand, and Jess follows him out of the kitchen. 

He tells their families they’re getting married. They look so _happy_ — _sound_ so happy—and the heaviness should be lifted, only it’s like she’s sinking into the ground.  
  
It would have been good this way. Good for Tony, good for her, for a few years at least. But she just can’t. 

She tells her family. Not everything, not yet, but about the match, about the scholarship, about what she is, could be, _will_ be. The weight lifts this time.

Her father adds his word to hers, and she is _floating._  

⁂

Flying today. Better than floating? Yeah, probably. Better than football? Not much of a question, since this time one leads to the other.   
  
Their families in proximity don’t lead to a mess, for once. Tony’s come to see her off, hugs her and waves at her like a brother. (It’s better this way, feels _right_ this way, without the lies and the marriage.)  
  
(Jules will tell her later how her mother cried and screamed at her on the way home from the wedding about being a lesbian, about how _angry_ Jules had felt listening to that. She’ll also tell her that her family’s okay with it now, that _she’s_ okay with it now, she’s okay with whatever Jess is ready for. Jess will think about their families at the airport, smiling and shaking hands, and she’ll think she’s okay too, will be okay with anything.)  
  
They see Beckham on their way out to their bright new future. It’s exciting ( _it’s a sign_ , Jules crows), and so’s what’s ahead of them.  
  
They hold hands and step out into the sunlight.


End file.
